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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Down to the last 2 upgrades to talk about - Ion Cannons are going to be the topic today. We've gotten three new Ion Cannon capable ships - the Imperial Star Destroy, the MC80, and the Raider II-Class - to go with the previous two (CR90B and VSDII) with two new upgrade cards available between them.

Monday, December 28, 2015

In our previous Squadron Composition article, we discussed how to build our lists with squadrons in Wave 1. Well, Wave 2 brings us new toys, and new strategies necessary to work with and counter against those new squadrons. Let's jump right in.

Friday, December 25, 2015

I was lucky enough to get the chance to chat with Truthiness (check out his blog for AARs of his tournament games!), the winner of the FFG Forums Holiday Vassal Tournament - the first major tournament to include Wave 2 ships. I've asked him a few questions (Bolded) and here are his answers. Hopefully we can all learn something from his success:

Thursday, December 24, 2015

Onward with Wave 2 upgrades, and it's time to talk about ordinance. We have two new ships that can take ordinance and they are both small base ships. The MC30c and the Raider1 also give us two new ordinance upgrade cards to go along with them. They join the VSD1 and GSD as the ordinance platforms in the game.

Let's take a look at the upgrades in question, and see how they can fit onto our lists going forward.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Wave 2 has been out a while now and cards are getting FAQ'd away. Let's take a look at the highlighted changes, and what that can mean for our games going forward. Also, we'll delve into the Tournament changes, including the major overhaul to tournament points.

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Sorry for the delay everyone. But last week was "Biggs Works a Ton of Hours" Week, and this week is "Biggs Picked up Xenoblade Chronicles X" Week, so articles got delayed. Guess I shouldn't have pushed out all those articles last week and saved them in reserve, 'eh? Anyways, on Monday we talked about Archetypes in Armada - how different ships played in different ways. Today we are going to look at point costs for ships, namely point costs relative to 400 points by percentage. We are also going to look at how many of each ship - naked - can fit onto a list.

This article was also pretty difficult to organize - there is a lot more happening with the math here than I have the space to conceptualize.

Monday, December 14, 2015

A long, long time ago, at least by the standards of this game, we talked about how to build a fleet. This was back in July, when Wave 1 was still relatively new and US Nationals still hadn't introduced the GenCon Special to the world. Non-Squadron lists weren't even considered as a viable option, aside from a brief talk about CR90 Swarms.

Well, Wave 2 and 400 point lists are the new thing that is happening now, and we have a Vassal tournament to shake out what our very forum's international meta is. Soon, store championships will be starting, and my personal FLGS is hosting its first Winter Kit tournament on Sunday. Frankly, this is a very exciting time to figure out the new list building, while everything is still shaking itself out.

So, what are we going to see now that Wave 2 is out and about? This is definitely going to be a multi-part article, so buckle in for a long ride. First, we are going to talk about Archetypes.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

With Wave 2 out on Vassal, the best way to do things was to hold a new tournament. Somehow, not learning my lesson, I found myself organizing the thing. First round of the new Wave 2 Tournament had me matching up against a strong 3 ship Imperial fleet. I've never played Zanos before, nor do I remember seeing him play, so he should be a new experience to play.

Monday, December 7, 2015

Having discussed the BigNames of the Rogues and Villains, and talking about the Rogue Generics, it's time to talk about the next set of fighters, with a new ability - Intel. That's right, the next two articles for the Commander's Guide are going to be about the Rebel's HWK-290 and the Imperial's Jumpmaster 5000.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

Last time we talked about a 16 point rebel squadron with Rogue that has a role of hunting down enemy squadrons. Well, much like with Wave 1, Wave 2 squadrons typically have an alternative squadron on the other faction. So let's talk about the YT-2400's direct Imperial analogue, the Aggressor, and the named pilot for the squadron, IG-88.

Saturday, December 5, 2015

Last time we talked about Squadrons for Rebels in Wave 2, we talked about the YT-1300 and Han Solo. This time, we're going to talk about the "Han Solo Wannabe Hack" Dash Rendar and the YT-2400, the Rebel's first Rogue generic squadron. Well, let's get to it.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Defensive Retrofits for Wave 2 gives us two new options to chose from, as well as three new ships that can take the upgrade. The MC80 and MC30c join the Rebels in retrofits, and the ISD2 becomes the first Imperial ship to add a defensive slot. The upgrades themselves differ from before - while the previous retrofits were about enhancing defense tokens and their use, the new retrofits are a whole different breed.

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Wave 2 actually gave us three new Offensive Retrofits, more than doubling the initial numbers. Continuing with the theme of the Offensive Retrofits of before, we got one that dealt with activating squadrons, one that dealt with getting rid of enemy squadrons, but we got one more that didn't deal with squadrons at all. In addition, we got three new ships that could take an offensive retrofit - the MC80 (Command variant), the ISD, and the Raider - to go with the previous two.